Last night, after a late dinner preceeded by a long day at work, I was walking back to my hotel which is right off Boulevard Haussmann. This also happens to be conveniently where the very large department stores are located. And, for the holidays, they appear to go all out. The exteriors are decked out in many many lights and the displays are linked together in winter themes, all done very nicely. It might have been 11pm and the stores might have been closed, but the windows were crowded with people checking out what the offerings this season were. Allow me to demonstrate pictorally:

This store takes up a city block and the entire store is covered in lights. It’s very impressive to check out.

The next block is home to Au Printemps. Even without the lights, I think this would be an amazing 19th century building (just look at the sign on it). Their lights were a little more subtle but had strobes flashing as accents as well.

I mentioned the window displays. Here are a couple of samples from Au Printemps

Every other window contained scenes of automated marionettes. This is a chorus of owls which would raise their wings in unison. A band is playing to the right of the photo. There were also scenes of foxes and deer.

In between the whimsy were the more classic windows with maneqins but still fit with the white winter theme of the more lively windows.

Another month, another trip to a European city 🙂

Here’s  my standard ‘suitcase in front of hotel bed pic’

The trip had a very cool beginning. The Eurostar to Paris has moved stations from Waterloo to St Pancras. They’ve taken a classic old station and fixed it up very nicely. On top of that, they’ve built dedicated rail through South London, which is notoriously conngested which means you can get to Paris in 2hrs 15min. Even better, St Pancras is literally 15 minutes from my flat, which means I can get from London to Paris in about 2 1/2 hours. Very cool. Here’s a shot of the trainshed at the station (I believe it’s one of the biggest in the world):

I’m here for work which has gone very smoothly so far. Coming up, some damn cool shots of Paris at Christmastime.

Just to return o’ so briefly to the theme of Egypt, here are some cat mummies:

Now, I love my cats, but this is a bit extreme. I would never do this to Anna and Chewy no matter how much I like having them around. And, as it turns out, neither did the Egyptians. These are not mummies of beloved members of their households, but actually sacrifices. Again, each animal signified some trait that was good to have as a person passed into the afterlife. So, they’d round up a cat, break its neck and bury it with the person. They also had fish and eel mummies to the left of these fine felines. Poor animals.

With almost 300 stops and a penchant for having names that sound a little odd to American ears (Cheapside, Elephant and Castle, Wapping), you would think it would be hard to come up with the funniest tube station name (which would likely correspond to a name of an area). Well, let me tell you, it’s not even close. I’ll give you a hint:

(It ain’t Heathrow)

Not only in the stop in question snicker worthy (I’m not the only one. I swear!), but it’s the end of the line for the Picadilly line which means you get to hear it multiple times when going north/eastbound and you get signs like the one above just screaming it at you. 🙂

Someday soon, you’ll have a picture of me at that stop. And I’ll have to find a pub in the area.

After seeing the vast array of history and culture that the British Museum has to offer, it was time for a little something different. Look at the two images below and please write a 5000 word essay on the differences:

An Egyptian mummy in the museum

An “Egyptian” statue at Harrods surrounded by luxury goods 🙂

I go in circles to say Carolyn and my next stop on our little London tour day was Harrod’s which is one of those gigantic department stores. It’s very large and is very beautiful but it’s quite different from a museum. We were most curious about the food hall since neither of us is much of a shopper. It was impressive, but the numbers of people got a little overwhelming:

We decided to check out some of the less crowded parts of the store and take in the wide array of goods to be purchased.

If you thought I was done with the British Museum after my first trip, you are sorely mistaken. Carolyn and I decided to hit up a little culture while she was in town and, when I found out she had never been, we hopped a train to see some of the British Museum. Last time, I focused on the large monumental Egyptian pieces that had been ‘acquired’ from that part of the world. This time around, it was time for the funerary practices. That’d be mummies. Cool!

When you think of Egyptian burials, you think the iconic image of King Tut. However, when a civilization lasts in various forms for 4000 years, the trends differ, sometimes in small ways sometimes in large ways. For example, as Egypt lost it’s independence to the Romans, you suddenly start seeing the style of the portraits on the front of the coffins/sarcophagus’ take on a very Roman look. There’s one in the museum’s collection that is actually a frieze that looks like something found in Pompeii. There were also different types of wrapping. Depending on the person, the quality of what they were bured in could be quite different.

This was a very well-to-do citizen’s sarcophgus. These are the two inner-most parts of her burial. She was buried like one of those Russian dolls with layer upon layer of coffin.

Since the Egyptians belief in the after-life was that you ended up in a world not unlike the temporal world, they wanted to make sure you had everything you needed to live a good life. So they added things like food, coins and, in this picture above, beer to your tomb so you could enjoy a nice ale (right) while chilling out for eternity.

Since Carolyn had never been to the museum, we back-tracked to the monumental Egyptian section so she could see the large statues and the Rosette Stone. This allowed my to get a picture of the arm that used to be part of a very large statue:

It’s not 100 feet long, but it’s pretty big. 🙂

So my company in the US has had some cool locations for their holiday party’s the last few years. We dined next to a Tyrannosaurus Rex 2 years ago and last year, we ate with the fishes at the Aquarium. Now, the setup in the UK isn’t quite as large scale, but they managed to put on a nice party for us anyway. It was a little cramped, but I imagine it’s harder to find a space to fit 150 people for dinner. The best part, as I’ve mentioned, was that Carolyn flew into town. So, I got to introduce her to people who she’ll see quite a bit more of very soon. Alas, most of the photos I took look like shit, but here’s at least one picture of me and Carolyn:

Note my new suit! That was quite amusing. I’ve never been known to dress nicely at work and my coworkers, none of whom are known for wearing nice clothes either, were all shocked at how I managed to clean up 🙂

Anyway, tomorrow’s a little touristy fun in London, so I’ll be sure to have more pictures.

Well, it’s been a very very busy time at work, so I haven’t done much but work. However, on Wednesday, I have a nice visit. Carolyn is coming back for a very brief visit! So it’ll have been less than 2 months since we saw each other. Hurray!! I have my holiday party and we’ve gone to it every year we’ve been together so, about a week ago, we looked at prices for flights and found that they weren’t too bad. And Carolyn doesn’t start her new job for a week, so it was perfect timing for an impromptu visit. 🙂
I’ll take pictures and stuff. I’m even taking some days off. Wow!

So I’ve been a fan of Midnight Oil for years. They made some very good rock music mixed with activism as well. I know the lead singer, Peter Garrett, had been pretty active in Australian politics, but here is some good news. Apparently, with the conservative government swept out of office after 11 years running things, Garrett will have a cabinet post. While the center-left politicians had been in the opposition, he was their shadow-government rep for climate change. Considering his and Midnight Oils environmentalism and anti-nuclear focus in politics, that makes sense. Even cooler, since the new PM has made one of his big differences with the previous Prime Minister that he would actually ratify the Kyoto Protocols on reducing pollution world-wide. That leaves one major industrialized country who hasn’t. Who is that? The US (sigh).

The New River isn’t a river at all but a man-made aqueduct built in the early 1600s to provide water to London as the city grew. Originally, it stretched almost 40 miles north of the city using gravity to bring the water down to London. Today, it officially terminates about a mile north of my flat, but it used to carry the water just west of my office. Now, the unused above-ground sections have been converted into a park and create a beautiful way to see some green in the city. As luck would have it, it’s the best way for me to get from my flat to the nearby farmer’s market. Since I like to walk along it often, I thought I get some photos of it while I went to pick up some meat and veg this fine Sunday morn.

A beautiful fall day along the New River. Since the river no long supplies water to anyone, many parts have got algae on it. But this section is still clear.

A nice bridge across part of it.

I am amazed at some of the cool wildlife you can still find here. One day, I’ll have my camera around when I see a fox. The bird pictured above likes to hang out along the river, as I’ve seen him a few times. I know absolutely nothing about birds, so I don’t know the type of bird this is. He’s pretty well conditioned to having people around as you can see how close I can get to snap a photo.

For those of you unaware, Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated here. Yeah, yeah, it’s a complete shocker. However, this being only the second Thanksgiving I’ve celebrated without my family, I wanted to do something other than work. Since part of this holiday has always been a little about excessive eating, I wanted a place that would mimic that well. I managed to wrangle up a few other coworkers and set about trying to get a booking at some place that would fit the needs of a Thanksgiving meal. I’d previously been to a pub somewhat near my flat which seemed to fit the bill called the Marquess Tavern. It has plenty of interesting beers, but the more important part was the choice of beef. To order it, you select a weights of beef from a chalkboard:

You pick the weight you want and it comes out freshly cut from the bone along with some green vegetables, potatoes, gravy and yorkshire pudding. We picked #1 and #6 which meant we ordered 5.5lbs of beef. Half of that (it came out on two plates) would look like this:

Tasty food! We managed to finish it all and felt good and full afterwards :). For those of you interested, here would be my companions for this years Thanksgiving:

On the left are Bhavin and Christiaan and on the right are Ben and Hang. It was a very international little group. We ate, imbibed and generally had a jolly old time.

The interior is very nice as well.

Anyhoo, there was no turkey or family, but it was a fun time. I’m hoping to try to get as many people as possible together sometime next year (yikes! that’s pretty close) and see how many of the choices of meat we can knock off the chalkboard.

Most of the fine people who read this are in the US, so I just wanted to take a moment to wishing you all a wonderful Thanksgiving. It’s always been the holiday I enjoy the most — good food, family, the feeling that winter’s in the air. I have some  British-like plans for the evening, but for now, it’s off to work for me 🙂

Hope you all have a lovely Thanksgiving!

Consider this a half-assed running commentary:

So I’m using my recently acquired TV to watch England play Croatia in football. England needs to tie or win to advance in the Euro 2008 tournament and, it’s been really entertaining so far. It’s at the newly rebuilt Wembley Stadium (which apparently has a shitty playing surface according to the announcers) which is gigantic. Even though there’s no alcohol allowed at international matches, the crowd is insane. They booed(!) during the Croatian national anthem and they have been loud and crazy the first 15 minutes.

Alas, while England is pushing, Croatia scored a goal on a keeper error (a routine save he screwed up) and on some weird goal where the English defence thought the forward was offsides, froze (he wasn’t offsides) and waltzed in for a second goal. Ouch!!

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That second goal for Croatia really took the air out of the fans. There’s still plenty of cheering, but the first part of the match showed the amazing sound of 70,000 people. I hope England pulls this off and doesn’t keep choking. 🙂

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It’s halftime and the commentators are writing Englands eulogy. They’re ripping them apart.

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Man, that penalty shot came from a half-assed penalty. But it’s now 2-1 Croatia.

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Holy Shit! England just scored a very nice good. It’s tied and that’s enough for them to advance if they can hold on.

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Bummer, nice goal by Croatia putting them ahead. If England pulls off a tie on this, I’ll be impressed.

Well, that was a painful roller coaster ride. The crowd is NOT happy with that one. England is out of the European championships.

Well, today is officially Carolyn’s last day in Chicago. She had a little gathering a bar called the Globe (and English style bar, I might add). Tomorrow morning, she and her friend Mehreen, will be loading up her car for the trip to NJ, leaving Chicago after three years. It’s very bittersweet. I’m sad she’s leaving Chicago (for herself and because it’s one less person I know there), but it means she’s closer to joining me in London, which is nice.

Everyone wish Carolyn a safe drive and good luck on her next round of adventures!! 🙂